TURKEY HEDGES ITS BETS

Abstract

From the sixteenth century Turkey has been preoccupied with the West. Though Turkey wanted to first emulate Western institutions and then join the West, the West has remained suspicious at best. First, Turkey was the indisputable enemy of Christian Europe. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Turkey began to adopt Western institutions. And, in the 1920s, in the era of the founder of modern Turkey, during the time of Kemal Atatürk–until well after Atatürk's death in 1938–a Westward orientation all but dominated Turkish public and private life. By the onset of the 1990s, Turks felt they were almost within reach of the long sought full embrace of the West. Turkey's President, Turgut Özal, after all, was the linchpin of the war in the Gulf. Without Turkish airfields, and most important, Turkish co-operation in the embargo of Iraqi oil, the isolation and defeat of Saddam would have failed. Without continued Turkish co-operation, the containment of Saddam would be impossible.